


What It Means to Love

by Evangeline_Pearl



Series: Inspiration Shots [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Light Angst, Muteness, POV Multiple, Scar Fetish, Scars, Secret Relationship, Size Difference, alludes to sex, off-screen sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2018-11-20 11:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11335053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evangeline_Pearl/pseuds/Evangeline_Pearl
Summary: Morino Ibiki is human. He's a soldier, he's a shinobi, but he's still human. He just needed to be reminded. And she swept into his life with all the (lack of) force of a summer breeze, and upturned everything. He did not even know he liked until he realized he loved her.For some, love is all encompassing, furious and fast. For him, love was secrets and silence, slow and easy. He didn't trip or fall, he simply walked right into love with her, and she opened up her heart and stitched him in.





	1. Walked into Love

Morino Ibiki was a simple man.

He was a weapon first, a human second.

For his village, he was a blade forged and weathered by pain and desperation. He had been broken down and dulled and made near unsalvageable many, many times. Yet his ability to persevere, to _get back up_ despite it all and to be made sharp again was what made him irreplaceable.

His scars were proof. They were perhaps hideous, and they were marks of disfigurement. They were etched into his face and skull, gouged deep in his shoulders and back, lacerated across his chest and sides. They pierced his hips and thighs, scoured into his shins and feet and hands.

They coated his body in their sharp, stinging hideousness, but each one _meant_ something. Each one was another second, another minute, he proved to himself that he was _stronger_. It proved another day, another hour, that he protected those who stood behind him, who confided in him.

He hid them for the benefit of the more squeamish, to spare them the unsolicited horror and indignity on his behalf, but it was not out of shame or fear. He wore them with pride. They were proof that there was nothing the world could throw at him, there was nothing anyone could inflict on him, to make him turn his back on his principles.

First and foremost, he was a soldier.

His physical resilience, for all that it was remarkable, could not hope to match his mental fortitude. He was a level-headed sort of man. His anger came in cold and silent waves rather than violent torrents. There were few things he feared, and the things he did manifested themselves in his personal demons.

Most of all, he was human and he made mistakes.

As a soldier, he had prepared for war, for torture, for _death_ , but soldiers often forgot something important. Sometimes they forgot how to fight with tongues and words rather than fists. They sometimes forgot how to see beauty in the world, how to find peace. They sometimes forgot how to laugh, how to smile. Some forgot how to trust their fellows, and sometimes they even forgot how to love.

But, fortunately, love did not forget them, and love found Morino Ibiki in the form of a tiny seamstress.

 _Delicate, breakable_. He could remember thinking of her the first time they met.

She was one of the smallest things he had ever seen. Her eyes were small and oval shaped, her nose upturned and the tip crooked to the right. The curve of her little ears were near perfect half-circles. Her shoulders slender, and he could wrap a hand around her arm and have his fingers overlap. She had tiny feet and tiny hands, fingers calloused from working with tough leathers and wire mesh.

He had dropped off some of his more-salvageable gear after a mission and bolted in a shunshin. All for wondering if he would somehow move too suddenly, breathe too hard, or speak too loud and somehow damage her. She was so _tiny_ , he almost felt he could crush her entirely with one swing of a hand.

 _Clumsy, noisy_ , was his second impression.

She had at least nine windchimes outside her open sliding door and she kept a loaf of bread by the window. He had caught her shredding bits for the birds every now and then, and there was always something warbling on her sill. Her workspace was always cluttered with knickknacks and whatnot. Fabric and boxes, spools of string and pincushions so stuffed they had to be more needle than cushion were all stacked in wobbly towers and in seeming disorder.

His arrival by shunshin had been so sudden that she’d tripped and fallen over a thick cord of rope and brought three of her stacks to the floor, an awkward flailing only just keeping a fourth from following suit. Several seconds of her flitting about the small, cramped space reassembling the towers gave him the strangest impression of a chipmunk storing nuts in tree trunks.

Then she had realized what he was there for and plucked one of the boxes out of the nearest tower. He had been worried for half a second that it would topple right on top of her, then she had handed it to him with the brightest smile and he’d only remembered the passing concern after he’d left.

The third time he met her wasn’t in her shop at all, but it was the most memorable.

His former superior had wrangled him out to his teammates’ family restaurant and she was there, sitting at a table for ten. She managed to be surrounded on all sides by exaggerated storytelling and wide gestures without taking part and without looking bored or excluded, despite the fact that no one at the table was speaking to her.

One of the children across the table chose then to ask her for a story, and she smiled for the first time. She could light up a room yet fade into the background with skill enough even a shinobi could admire. It wasn’t until the whole crowd of children cheered with delight that he realized she had begun to regal them in tale. With her hands.

His mentor still ribbed him for the stuttered cough he had made at realizing what that meant, and he himself was still embarrassed that it took him so long to realize she was _mute_.

It took him another year and a half to realize she was everything yet nothing like she seemed.

She was small, but she was hardly delicate. Slender but not breakable. She was equal parts happy chipmunk and graceful dancer, silent as she was loud. She had a boundless well of patience and a lively fullness that never seemed to run dry.

It took him less than a month to ask her in to dinner, and even less to realize that she had managed to do what none other had been able to: change his mind. All without even trying. Somehow, her full presence had been enough to make him realize that living without love wasn’t easy. That guarding his heart like he guarded his mind was only hurting himself.

He had sworn, shortly after he had fully encountered the depths of shinobi life, that he would not allow himself that sort of weakness. And here she was, changing that very decree as though bending his will was as easy as breathing.

Perhaps for her it was.

She had a way of poking and pushing at each of his founded “fundamentals of life” and gently nudging them until they had been tipped right off their axes without him noticing. She could look into his eyes and see the hurt and fear and rage and soothe them without him having to say a word—without him having to acknowledge they were there at all.

He attributed it to her forced silence. Her muteness had forced her into the role of observer, and she did it with gusto. She spent her afternoons in the parks catering to clan children, and there would often just sit and watch the people pass her by. Until a handful of kids would approach her, then she would whip a story into existence with a gentle flourish of her hand.

It took a long time for him to accept the budding emotion in his chest. He had once thought his heart barren, a bone-dry desert. But she reached so deep, so far down, that it almost seemed as though he himself still had an inexhaustible pool of love stored deep under that sandy plateau.

And he needed her.

On the days he looked up and could not tell friend from foe, enemy from ally, he sought her out. The afternoons he could not sit still for paranoia still struck in the coming of night found him seated on her rear porch, listening to the soft tinkling of wind chimes all around him. When he could not find it in him to weather another day surrounded by secrets and torture, he stood sentinel while she sewed.

He wanted her in the happy times too. She could always give him something to smile about. He asked her once how her day was, and he found out exactly how she could entertain a hoard of children for hours with her tales. There was never a dull moment in her life, and the minute things started to seem too quiet, _something_ would happen.

One of the stray cats that sometimes stole the bread from her birds (at least until she started leaving a bit of fish out her back door) would leap through the window and send all her stacks astray. Or a bird would find its way inside and get tangled in her spools of thread. A snake would slip inside during the rain and get lost in her fabric closet (which had quickly lost its purpose as she owned far too much fabric to fit) trying to get out again. Or a raccoon would mistake her collection of plush snacks for real food and she got all entangled in a scavenger hunt trying to get them back.

She gave him something to look forward to. She always had something for him. Once it was a pie, the next a set of cupcakes, a replacement yukata for the one he wore only in the privacy of his bedroom, a new set of dishes. Her gifts were always wrapped in delicate paper with only the wildest designs, and always topped with a small fabric bow.

She once tried to wrap one of her stray cats for him, but settled for just the bow instead. He neither accepted or rejected that gift, and the cat now slept perfectly at ease on the top shelf of his bookcase. He named it Koko on the third month anniversary of the cat’s stay with him, and Koko made a formidable addition to his apartment’s defenses. The last idiot that tried a shunshin in the window got a face full of claws and fur for their trouble.

The most important, however, was that she gave him someone to come home to.

It took a year of dating for him to allow her into his home. It only took her two months to have him effectively moved out and into her house. He hadn’t noticed until two weeks later he couldn’t find his pile of laundry, and remembered it was probably in her laundry basket. Her expression when he asked about it was enough to fill him with wonder and warmth for days.

The transition had been the most jarring. Civilian-shinobi relationships rarely survived it. But he supposed she had already been primed and prepared for it. For a civilian, she had lived all her life with half a foot in the shinobi world. He had noticed most of her patrons were shinobi shortly after his initial acquaintance with her. She was, after all, one of the best seamstresses in all Konoha, her tiny hands mimicking stitches with imperceptible difference.

He kept the apartment, but most days started with him at her kitchen table and ended with him in her bed—a bigger one he had bought shortly after realizing the change.


	2. Stitched into Love

_Big_ , Matsui Rei could recall noticing at first. Yes, she was a tiny slip of a thing even on the average day, but Morino Ibiki was one of the tallest men she had ever seen. She barely reached his ribs, and that was if she stood on her toes and craned her neck.

But, he was more than just _tall_. He was, well, _wide_. She could probably duplicate herself and still not equal his body mass. Rei was very proud of being a seamstress, and her eye was rarely ever wrong. By proportions alone, she put him at almost ninety kilograms. Though, she did not mean to insinuate that he was overweight or big-boned, either.

If she had to say, he was simply. . . all muscle.

From head to toe, there were no gaps in his body’s flesh armor. There wasn’t a single part of his body that would give. She knew one other with a similar muscle-to-fat ratio _(Konoha’s Green Beast, if she remembered correctly)_ , but Morino still took the cake (and ate it too).

Immediately, it made her want to put her hands on him.

She wanted to find out if his muscles were as hard as they looked. But, more than anything, she wanted to put a cloth to his skin and stitch him into it. She wanted to sew something for him. There was a lot of things she wanted to do, actually, if she thought about it carefully enough.

One of those many things was finding out just how those large hands of his would hold her.

_Sad_ , she noticed next. Though, when she studied a little more, she had to reevaluate. It was not sorrow that lingered on his shoulders, but a perpetual loneliness.

He had made it a point to close everyone out, keep everyone but himself at arms-length.

There was very little that Rei knew about what shinobi did, and for a reason. Her mind was an imaginative one, and there were many circumstances and reasons she had cooked up over the years on how the clothes that landed in her hands got themselves there. But, she still made it a point not to ask, and her clientele made it a point not to offer.

She liked to think it was the valor of her discretion that kept them coming back to her humble corner of Konoha. The likelihood was probably her muteness that did it.

As cynical as it was to think so, who would bother a mute seamstress for information when she could not speak and was more likely to shake apart than sign anything coherent?

Still, she knew  _enough_. There were enough questionable fluids almost embued in the fabrics she received for her to sometimes not be able to sleep at night. And if just seeing the faintest remnants of the aftermath did that to her, what was it doing to the man in the center of it all?

And Morino Ibiki was the kind of man in the kind of profession that saw her private enterprise afloat.

So yes, Matsui Rei decided that the huge Morino fellow had to be lonely.

She was nowhere near as dense as some of her cousins, and it was roughly around the same time that she realized she _wanted_.

She wanted him, and his hands. She wanted his scars and his nightmares, his fears and his dreams. She wanted to hold him close and let him hold her too. It was more now than just a passing thought. This was more. This desire shook her to the core, and for a moment it scared her, _he_ scared her.

Then she would look over, somehow he was _everywhere_ , and feel like she’d been dropped into the river in winter.

She _wanted_.

Perhaps it was strange to notice it third on the list of her recollections, but Rei honestly did not properly recognize his _strength_ of spirit for quite some time.

Being as big as he was, it was little surprise, in the end. But the fashion in which she noticed was one that left its impression seared into her retinas.

She had managed to get on the roof of her shop  _(please, ask no questions)_ , but slipped on her way down. There was a pile of clothes to be repaired below, so she wasn't particularly afraid of falling, but it was still several feet up, and the suddenness of it all had her mouth wide open in a silent scream.

But he was there, somehow under and around and over her everywhere.  _Always wanted to know how that would feel_ , she thought, clutching tight to him. And, really, it was the cords of sinew and scar tissue that pressed against her from all angles that made her aware.

Aware of that power in him that could tear her to pieces.

_Beautiful_.

Kami-sama, bless her soul, but she had been given a beautiful man and she was unrepentant in her wiles and ways to worship him as such.

His featured were too marred and too square to be pretty, and he was too rough around the edges and too _violent_ looking to be handsome. But, she was always one to believe that because Kami-sama had taken away her voice, he had given her eyes that could _see_.

And her man, one he was honestly and truly _hers_ , was beautiful.

Oh, it had taken her a while.

A couple months of pining, three of dating without him noticing, another year to have him move in with her, and yet six more months for him to finally acknowledge it. But she was his and he was hers.

Just like she had known he would be all those months ago when he first walked in her door and she craned her neck up to look at him.

Those scars of his, the same ones that chased everyone else away, were especially perfect. They were his pride and his shame, his penance, and his kindness. They painted every stretch of his body, and he always brought her new ones.

But, her hands were tough from all the work she put them through, and the drag of his scar tissue against her palms was a feeling she could never grow tired of. They were also perfect for nibbling on, for clutching at and scratching, for biting.

The little ones on all his fingers were particularly good for teasing. They were delicious to chew on, and when he flipped them over and put his hands on _her_ , well. Her man knew the human body _damn fine_.

Morino Ibiki could bring a body to the peak of desire and pleasure with just his hands as easily as he could break it down to agony and despair.

The very first time he had her confined her to the bed for _days_. Size-difference was a _glorious_ thing, and she wasn’t going to confirm or deny anything, but if she could still _feel_ him there for a while afterward? That was her little secret.

But it wasn’t just that, or the sore muscles she didn’t know she had. It wasn’t even the bruises that were probably never going to fade at the rate they were going.

No, it was the pure _aftershocks_ that hit her every now and again that struck so hard her hands shook.

He had the decency to look chagrinned the first couple time she complained. Said he would go easy on her next time.

She jumped him the instant his phantom left her.

He was big, lonely, strong, and _irrevocably beautiful._

Best of all, he was sewn into her heart.

Forever, if she had anything to say about the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I didn't directly fact check, but according to [here](https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/utkanflash/lists/officially-the-tallest-biggest-naruto-characters/65976/), Morino Ibiki is the 15th tallest character in Naruto, and from what I can see, the tallest in Konoha.
> 
> Also, Matsui Rei is a precious little bubble, even if she is a bit of a pervert. She has a fetish for scars, okay?


End file.
